[HANASHIR:7091] Something to consider.

[Burton A. Zipser <zipmusic...>]

>
> The following article appeared in last week's Jewish Forward. Note that this 
> was
> written before Ariel Sharon ascended the Temple Mount and sparked the 
> Palestinian
> riots of Rosh Hashanah.

> Learning to Sacrifice the Temple Mount
> (from the 9/29/00 Forward)   By MICHAEL WALZER
>
> Some American Jews I know are ready to fight for Jewish sovereignty over a
> united Jerusalem and, above all, over the Temple Mount. Listening to them, I
> was reminded of an old Bill Maudlin cartoon from, I think, the late 1940s.
> Two old gentlemen are sitting in the big leather armchairs of a Manhattan or
> Washington club; one of them speaks, leaning far forward, balancing on his
> cane: "I say it's war, Throckmorton; and I say let's fight!"
>         I am not ready to fight. I have bad memories of the Temple Mount. It
> belonged long ago to a caste of priests who ran a slaughterhouse there and
> officiated at the sacrificial cult that was Israel's religion before the
> creation of Judaism. In a book about Jewish "practice and belief" in the
> last century of the Second Temple, E.P. Sanders provides a remarkable
> account of Passover on the Temple Mount. He estimates that priestly butchers
> working at top speed slaughtered ;some 30,000 lambs in a single afternoon.
> The water of Kidron brook was so thickened by the blood that it was sold as
> fertilizer to local farmers (the proceeds going to the priests). Surely the
> rabbis would have stopped this sort of thing, if the Romans had not done it
> for them. At some point, the priestly cult would have been overthrown and
> the Temple turned into a synagogue (more likely, into four or
> five competing synagogues). If that had happened, the site of the
> transformation might be worth celebrating. But because the transformation
> wasn't our own work, and because we can't celebrate the brutality of the
> Romans, the Temple Mount, it seems to me, is best forgotten. Ranking it high
> among Jewish holy places can only give people, Jews among them, the wrong
> idea about our practices and beliefs today.
>         Indeed, some Jews already have the wrong idea. As a nation, we have 
> never
> had the courage to repudiate the sacrifices. We have been forced by the
> Roman destruction to mourn not simply the people who were killed or sold
> into slavery or the state that was lost, but also the Temple that was
> destroyed. Perversely, we mourn the Temple more than the people or the
> state. So the prayer book includes prayers for the restoration of the
> sacrificial cult (although I can't believe that many of the men and women
> who recite the prayers actually hope for the restoration; they would flinch
> from the spectacle Mr. Sanders describes). Priests, or their putative
> descendants, still play a role
> in Jewish religious services.
>         There is a price to be paid for what I can only call this dishonesty.
> Thus, the tiny sect of Israeli Jews (Americans too?) who are preparing for
> the resumption of the sacrifices, designing the priestly robes and writing a
> code for the rituals: lam sure that they claim to be acting in the name of
> Jews generally. What if, one day, some other fanatics tried to blow up the
> mosques, so as to clear the way for the immediate rebuilding of the Temple?
> The rest of us will insist rightly that nothing would be further from our
> minds. We only hoped that God would come...and do what?
>         It would be better to be rid of the Mount and to admit that we don't 
> want
> to rebuild the Temple, or reinstall the priesthood, or reopen the
> slaughterhouse. What a relief if the restored state of Israel would free
> world Jewry once and for all from this memory. If I were an Israeli I would
> leap at the chance. The Golan, the eastern shore of the Kinneret, the Jordan
> valley - all these would be much harder to give away; I would want to listen
> to all the arguments about security and to think carefully about the
> necessary guarantees and the on the-ground arrangements. But losing the
> Temple Mount would be a kind of liberation?
>

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